Toasty at Gilwell Wintercamp

Chelsea Bell (UWE Bristol)

Wednesday 7th of February 2018

On the weekend of the 12th- 14th January, a group of SSAGOers got together at Gilwell Park to help out again at another national Scouting event, this time Wintercamp.

The campfire circle is fast becoming SSAGO home at this site as we were here on Saturday and Sunday morning running Backwoods cooking! S’mores are ever popular as always, what child doesn’t like a mouthful of sugar?!

We also had brownies to make in oranges to be cooked on the campfire but a lack of foil on Saturday made this slightly more challenging. Never ones to shy away from a challenge, we spent the day experimenting with as many different amounts of mixture as possible to achieve the perfect brownie, some were edible, some became charcoal. This improved significantly with the introduction of foil on Sunday!

We had a steady stream of sugar hyped and muddy visitors during the day but of course the downtime meant we had some fun and games of our own! You’d be surprised to know how many of the SSAGOers in attendance were decent jugglers… and how many were not! Hopefully this improves by next year!

Saturday evening was a chance to escape into the warmth and support the cinemas on site. Pairing up we picked a movie and ventured off to watch it with varying amounts of Scouts and Explorers turning up. Popcorn and movies are still a winning combination for us!

Sunday was more cooking with less Scouts and Explorers, but the ones that did turn up got creative with their s’mores sticks, with one Scout managing more marshmallows on one stick than any of us could face! After a quick clean up and pack up, we were off home again cold and tired but ready for another event any time soon!